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New Fiction

We’re elated to announce the publication of Christopher Nosnibor’s new book, The RAGE Monologues, in print, today. To celebrate the launch, we’re offering it at a special offer dicount price with 25% off the retail price of £5.99 (or domestic currency equivalent) for a limited period only.

The blurb: Modern life is full of niggles and frustrations. It’s also bursting with ballaches and tempestuous turmoils on a global scale. What is it that winds you up or grinds your gears? Sometimes, it’s an accumulation of the little things that push you to, or over, the brink. So, what gets under your skin, gnaws away at your gut, and drives you crazy? For Christopher Nosnibor, the answer is pretty much everything. Evolved as a spoken word project over the course of three years, ‘The Rage Monologues’ is the hoarse, enraged, spittle-spraying voice of one man against the world. Politics, media, poetry, and post office queues – it’s open season in this collection of splenetic, profanity-laden tirades. By turns amusing, sad, and simply ire-fuelling, ‘The Rage Monologues’ is a relentless, uncompromising, and eye-poppingly vitriolic tour de force.

The cover art (click on the image to purchase):

The RAGE Monologues is also available as an ebook, here, and will be available both digitally and in print via all on-line retail channels soon.

We are proud to announce that an expanded edition of Christopher Nosnibor’s Rage Monologues, previously only available as a limited-edition pamphlet at his live performances, will soon be available as a trade paperback and e-book.

Check the burb here:

Modern life is full of niggles and frustrations. It’s also bursting with ballaches and tempestuous turmoils on a global scale. What is it that winds you up or grinds your gears? Sometimes, it’s an accumulation of the little things that push you to, or over, the brink. So, what gets under your skin, gnaws away at your gut, and drives you crazy? For Christopher Nosnibor, the answer is pretty much everything. Evolved as a spoken word project over the course of three years, The Rage Monologues is the hoarse, enraged, spittle-spraying voice of one man against the world. Politics, media, poetry, and post office queues – it’s open season in this collection of splenetic, profanity-laden tirades. By turns amusing, sad, and simply ire-fuelling, The Rage Monologues is a relentless, uncompromising, and eye-poppingly vitriolic tour de force.

Clock the cover art here:

Dates, prices, and perhaps some excerpts to follow. Keep watching this space.

Stuart Bateman’s debut novel, Grind, is published as an ebook via Smashwords today.

What had be wanted to be when he grew up? Adam struggled to remember. Probably an astronaut or racing driver, the same as any other kid. But reality had put paid to those vague ambitions early in life. Average in every way, the opportunities simply hadn’t presented themselves. He’d done well enough in school and sixth form college, before drifting his way to a mediocre degree at a mediocre university. In this respect, Adam represented the British middle class everyman.

Now, in his mid thirties in a low-level management job in a large corporation, Adam Johnson is at something of a crossroads. Single and terminally bored, he’s concerned that life is passing him by, while all around him his friends and colleagues are busy living and experiencing the highs, the lows and the dramas of life.

Grind is what happens when Generation X drifts into day-jobs. With the ennui of Michel Houellebecq’s Whatever and the bleakness of Michael Bracewell’s Perfect Tense, Stuart Bateman’s debut novel captures succinctly the emptiness of everyday existence in the early 21st century.

It’s all happening on Monday 8th September at the Woolpack in York. ‘All’ would be the launch of the second Clinical, Brutal anthology. Entry is free and a special, limited, numbered edition of the book will be available for purchase at a discounted price on the night.

The debut novel by Clinicality founder and editor Stuart Bateman is set for publication later this year. More clinical than brutal, it’s called Grind: A Novel. This is the first excerpt from it to be published anywhere, ever.

It was after half past six on a Thursday night at the end of May, and Adam was still at his desk, and the tables, graphs and spreadsheets on his monitor were beginning to blur. All of the other workers had left, the last to leave the floor had been Neil Benson, a renowned workaholic and famously single and friendless, married to his job and his vintage car. mid-50s, he still lived with his ageing mother and the sort of man who maintained a precision-combed side parting and wore vests under his cheap white short-sleeved shirts from Asda. Only the cleaner, Terry Fuckshit – so nicknamed on account of the fact he constantly cursed under his breath as he worked, invariably alternating between ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ or various adaptations thereof – remained. Adam watched for a short time as the grouchy middle-aged man worked his way down the office, using the same dirty cloth to wipe the surface of each desk as well as the buttons and handsets of each telephone. His bald head shone under the yellow-hued overhead lights. Out of earshot, Adam couldn’t hear his angry, bitter cursing. He rubbed his eyes and returned his focus to the screen. He kept his pupils glued there as the thick-necked man in a blue tunic came closer, utterances of filth audible beneath his breath.

Adam acted as though he couldn’t hear, that he was so immersed in his work as to be oblivious.

“Working late, eh?” Terry Fuckshit barked as he smeared his dirt-encrusted cloth over the first desk in the row before Adam’s.

“Yeah,” replied Adam drably, not wanting to engage any more than was strictly necessary. Something about Fuckshit made Adam feel uncomfortable.

“’Ard luck.,” the cleaner commiserated gruffly. “I work late every fuckin’ night, mind,” he added with a clear resentment as he wiped streaks of murky water across the surface of the next desk.

Adam didn’t reply.

Soon, the cleaner was at his desk. “Wannit cleanin’?” Fuckshit asked, hefting the cloth in his hand, the tattoos on his knuckles spelling ‘HATE’. The faded blue ink was fuzzy round the edges, and Adam couldn’t help wondering if he’d done the work himself – and if he’d had the work done in prison.

“Er, no, it’s ok thanks,” Adam said, as lightly as he could muster.

“Suit yersself,” Fuckshit growled and moved on to the next desk.

When he’d completed his round of cursory germ-spreading desk-wiping, Fuckshit began vacuum cleaning the stained, staple-dotted carpet, cursing all the while, and Adam decided it was time to leave.

Clinicality Press are elated to announce that Karl van Cleave’s collection of short stories, entitled Incisions, Collisions and Aborted Missions will be published as an e-book via Amazon Kindle and Smashwords on 28th February 2012.

Van Cleave made his Clinicality debut in the Clinical, Brutal… anthology in 2012 and has since featured in the Clinicality blogzine. Incisions… contains 6 short and brutal stories and is Karl’s premiere solo publication. Written in blood with no detail too unpleasant, Karl’s writing is not for those with a delicate disposition.

It took me a while to find a seat. The things above the seats weren’t working, and instead of showing which seats were available and which seats were reserved, and between which locations, they were all showing as simply ‘Reserved’. Really fucking helpful, that. I’d already walked more than halfway down the carriage before I realised this, but then all of the seats had been occupied by at least one passenger anyway. I try to avoid sitting next to strangers if I can help it.

Then I got lucky: a pair of seats, forward-facing, completely vacant, not even with anyone’s rubbish left on the seat or the pull-down tray / table thing. I took the window seat. I prefer window seats to aisle seats because in the aisle you invariable end up getting your toes trodden on even if you keep them under the seat in front. Otherwise, you get you shoulder knocked or your head bashed by someone lugging a bulging bag down the carriage. What to they think the luggage racks are for.

Still, I soon wished I’d taken the aisle seat and blocked off the access to the window seat. No sooner had I made myself comfortable and opened up my newspaper than some obese middle-aged hag with a bad perm plonked her immense arse in the seat beside me. She didn’t even fucking ask if it was taken. Just sat down, overhanging my seat by a good five or six inches, her upper arms as big as my thighs encroaching into my personal space. She was wheezing like a steam engine with the effort of simply getting down the carriage and sitting down. And she stank. I know, fat people always say that it’s a myth that fat people smell, and I’ll admit, not all of them do. But it seems that every time a wheezer parks themselves next to me on a train, they fucking honk. Even so, this one was bad.

I shunted myself over so I was pressed against the window, pulled my iPod from my pocket and shoved the phones deep into my ears before turning it up. Even then, the full-on metal racket of Ministry wasn’t enough to cover up the noise of her breathing. She pulled a Kindle from amidst the folds of flesh and I could see she was reading some trashy crime novel where the characters who work for CID have alliterative names. Probably some toss by Lee Child or another mass-production mainstream writer aimed at people with a reading age of ten. She was on chapter 85. I’m guessing they were short chapters, but even so. The physical act of reading was making her short on breath, and sweat even more judging by the aroma.

For a moment, I pictured the scene in which chapter 86 saw Brian Brown rocked up to find a fat, blubbery corpse lying on a station platform and their discussion as to whether or not it was murder or if the hulking beast had simply expired, her enlarged heart having given up trying to pump the blood round the miles of cholesterol-filled arteries, the strain being all too much. My mind began to run through the various ways I could do away with her and I found myself wondering which method would provide the greatest satisfaction. Part of me wanted to stab her, just to see if she’d deflate like a balloon when punctured.

The train arrived at my destination before I had the time to act on my desire to bludgeon her to death with my laptop or to ram her Kindle so far down her throat that she asphyxiated. I disembarked and couldn’t help feeling a bit cheated. Still, it was probably for the best.